


A Long Conversation

by Asimiento



Category: Silicon Valley (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-01
Updated: 2016-12-27
Packaged: 2018-08-28 11:01:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 18,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8443315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Asimiento/pseuds/Asimiento
Summary: Okay, here's the thing. Just. Have you ever wanted to piss someone off so much that you just… make something up, just to rile them up? And then the lie snowballs. And then you're making a dubious transaction. Several dubious transactions. And then, and then, and then, and then you're so caught up in the lie that you start blurring it with the truth and then, and then and then — and then! Things just start fucking up on their own like a never-ending domino slide collision of your own design? Because that's what this is.





	1. Act One, Scene One

An ivory Mercedes ambles up along a lane of brimstone houses and slate roofs, lush foliage trapped in ice and snow peeking from behind steel gateways and marbled arches, an entryway flanked by bronze nymphs, glassy in the cold, arms wrapped in chains of ivy, foliage crawling along high stone walls, crystals drooping like willow shoots along the rim of a delicately carved fountain, and other similarly sumptuous, similarly elegant, similarly impeccably, immaculately kept properties. Jared looks on and realizes, belatedly, that something’s amiss.

He looks to his side and watches Richard, gaze fixed to the view beyond the frosted glass, nervously tapping his fingers at the rim of the car door, fidgeting with the cuffs of the crisp shirt he changed into before meeting the driver at the airport, who Richard seems to know well. Jared looks down to inspect his own attire—Sunday clothes, somewhere in between professional and casual—and realizes that he, compared to present company, must be woefully underdressed for wherever it is they’re supposed to be going. Supposedly, just a holiday homecoming. Normal. Unceremonious. Modestly festive. Not some formal affair.

As the car rolls into a roundabout flanked by trim greenery covered in white powder, all the signs snap into place, and a fact dawns on him. The signs being: changing into unusually sharp clothing, the long-time chauffeur driving a luxurious car into an extravagant neighborhood, and the ridiculously long drive from gateway to doorstep. Richard Hendricks—of the rotating drab hoodies and worn-out sneakers, of the fraying posters tacked on a spackled wall over a creaky loft bed, of the inability to do much in the way of housekeeping, of the neurotically neat comportment and rhetoric—comes from old money. Richard Hendricks—who’d received snail mail from his parents and gagged at the thick card stock and calligraphic inscription, and asked Jared if he wanted to come with to a holiday _thing_  at his family’s home now that his parents are talking to him again, because Jared has no plans for the holidays and hey, he’ll probably like it there, he swears he’ll explain later, don’t worry, he’ll take care of the details and the expenses, just bring a nice suit, don’t worry, but also it’s fine if Jared would rather not, no pressure, whatever—had somehow tricked him into spending a week and a half at his ludicrously grand childhood home.

Some small part of Jared really, really wants to laugh, but he holds it all in. Richard's family is undeniably moneyed. Not just affluent, but loaded the way Jared always pictured rich people in cartoons were loaded. Opulent abodes and sharp-dressed chauffeurs and casual formalwear and all.

“Something the matter?” Richard asks him.

_Your invariable pedantry makes so much sense now,_  Jared wants to say. He shakes his head and smiles, instead.

The car stops. Before stepping out, Richard turns to the driver and says, “thanks, John. Tell Yolanda I said hi. I’ll stop by later.”

John replies something inaudible, holds out a wrinkled hand to squeeze Richard’s shoulder. He turns to Jared and says, “it was nice meeting you, too.”

They step out, haul their luggage to the doors, and wait. Jared watches the car roll away as Richard fidgets some more with his cuffs, standing in front of a looming walnut door with a polished brass knocker right there at the center.

“Uh, Jared? There’s something I forgot to tell you,” Richard starts.

If it’s about the house, Jared thinks, the drive up to it was a more than sufficient primer. “Oh. What about?” He replies, casually.

“When I told my parents I was going to bring a friend over, I kind of implied that we…” Richard gestures to the both of them with a shaky hand.

Then, the door opens. A woman with long red curls leans by the entry, overlarge sweater drooping past one shoulder. She considers the both of them with a raised brow.

“As I live and breathe! Richie, It’s been ages.”

“Hey, Winnie,” Richard says.

Winnie grins and pulls him into a hug. Then, she turns to Jared. “You must be the partner,” she says. She gives him a once over, pulls Richard closer and elbows him by the side.

Jared blinks, mildly confused. _A partner_ , he wants to correct, until he realizes she meant something else. He decides to play along and grins back.

“My brother has told me absolutely nothing about you,” she says, making way for the both of them to come through.

“Likewise,” Jared responds.

“I can’t wait to hear all about what Richie’s been up to these days.”

Richard immediately comes in between the both of them, rolling the luggage from the doorway down to the hall. He keeps going and gestures for Jared to follow.

“Winnie, let’s catch up later. We’ll get settled in first, yeah?” He calls.

Winnie frowns in mock dismay. Richard rolls her eyes at her, and she rolls her eyes back. “Later, then,” she responds, walking away and disappearing into the end of the hall.” 

Jared considers the entry, with its Baccarat chandelier dangling right at the center, marbled floors and checkered tiles along the perimeter bleeding into a curved stairway, oriental fineries and bronze sconces along the stretch of it. A smell of talcum and roses wafts in the air. Richard shows Jared to the guest room near the entry, with its single brass bed covered with a thick white duvet, single mahogany desk and single mahogany closet, white curtains with a hint of a view of a sprawling garden.

As Richard closes the door and shows Jared the room, Jared can’t help but finally, finally laugh at the sheer ridiculousness of it all. Richard just looks on, confused. Then, he’s laughing, too.

“Richard, you didn’t mention that your home was…”

“Ridiculous?” Richard suggests.

Jared looks around. “Expansive,” he decides.

They sit by the edge of the queen-sized bed. Richard vaguely gestures to the whole of the room. “Sorry I didn’t loop you in. My parents and I kind of haven’t seen each other in a while. They sort of cut me off when I was still in college. We haven’t really spoken since.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“No, no, I’m over it, really. And it’s fine, I never really cared much for this bullshit anyway.”

“What changed?”

“I don’t know. Fuck, I don’t know. They sent a letter. They said that they regret what they did. Wanted me to come over for the holidays. Their way of apologizing, I guess.”

“You don’t sound too convinced.”

Richard shrugs. He exhales, and Jared notices his knuckles have whitened from the fidgeting and the cold.

“I’m flattered that you invited me to accompany you.”

Then, Richard laughs, low and bitter and slightly nervous. The dust rolls along the floor. The curtain sways from the slightest brush of wind. The laughing continues for an uncomfortable minute.

“No, thank you for coming with,” he says, as the laughter tapers off. “I’m serious. Thank you. Really. I kind of thought I’d gotten past this, uh, issue. Now I don’t think I have. Having company…it really, really helps.”

Richard gives him a slanted smile and an awkward pat on the shoulder.

“Then I’m honored to be here,” Jared simply says. “I’d be happy to help in any way I can.”

Then, Richard looks away, slightly upset. Whatever he’s distressed over, Jared doesn’t pry. Richard thanks him again, and he says nothing more.

Then, he’s left to get his bearings. He unpacks his things, arranges his clothes into neat sections over the bedspread, hangs them into the closet. He considers the room and its pleasant austerity, spare with intent rather than forced into bareness, out of straitened circumstances. He considers that it, nevertheless, reminds him of his mother’s old room, in some small way. 

 

* * *

 

 

Richard’s room has been kept almost exactly the way he left it. Kept because there is no patina of dust all over any surface or crease or any of the edges along the space. He flops onto his old bed and wonders what to make of it all—the fact that everything’s as it is, deliberately maintained, and not neglected or left untouched from what he guesses would have been disgust. It’s deeply unsettling.

There’s a knock on his door and Winnie peeks through. “Can I come in?” She calls.

“Eh,” Richard replies.

“I’ll take that as a yes.” She immediately swoops in and joins him on the bed, holding an arm out to cradle his side. He fidgets, and she pulls him closer. 

“What’s this for?”

Winnie pinches the tip of his nose. “Just missed you,” she coos.

“Really?”

“Well, I was gonna say it looks like something’s up, but something’s always up with you.”

Richard turns to his sister, looks her in the eye, and sits up on the bed, resting by the wall. He gestures for her to join him, and she does. He sighs and shakes his head. She gives him a look that’s half parts amused and dismayed.

“Jared’s not my partner-partner. Just a partner at the company,” he says, quietly. “I brought him to piss mom and dad off.”

Winnie lifts a hand to the back of his head and pats it, a little awkwardly. “Oh, Richie. You didn’t have to do that.”

Richard shrugs. “They said they wanted to _move forward_  and you know what, if they’re really over it, then they wouldn’t mind this! So, y’know, I really fucking had to.”

Winnie tuts. Richard grins, self-satisfied.

“Can’t believe you got someone to play along with your bullshit.”

Richard shakes his head again. He makes a sharp exhale and laughs as he stutters through an admission. “Uh, Jared kind of… he kind of… he doesn’t really know?”

His sister gives him a cross look; daggers from her eyes to the whole of him. He gets a slap to the back of his head. He whines. She laughs. 

“You moron! My god, you’re such a child.”

“Look, what was I gonna say? Hey, Jared, my extremely conservative parents and I had a falling-out six years ago when I came out to them, now they wanna see me but I’m still pretty goddamn pissed, do you wanna be my fake partner for literally no other reason than to help me aggressively spite them?”

Winnie cringes. “You’re a terrible person.”

“I know,” Richard sighs.

“This is an awful plan.”

“Yup.”

“And you’re so mean. To all involved parties. Especially Jared. You’re so mean, Richie.” She whacks the back of his head, again.

Richard holds his hands up. “I get it!”

Winnie laughs at Richard, and he winces in mock disgust. She pushes her legs out and lets her body droop back to the bed, crinkling her nose as she looks up at her brother with a mix of ire and fondness that comes out slightly, slightly condescending.

“God, I really did miss you. You’re still so, so stupid. My stupid, stupid little brother.”

 

* * *

 

There’s a bookshelf along the hall with framed photos and accolades and sundry. Jared regards the whole of it first, a calculated clutter of brass and paper memorabilia, inspecting each piece from the top, down. Family photos against backdrops of notable landmarks, Richard's science fair medals and trophies, a grained candid of a young Winnie with her head poised and chin resting on the tip of a gleaming violin, a Berklee conservatory certificate, framed records and more photos. Jared considers a lone photo of Richard and Winnie in their Sunday clothes, both young and awkward, all lanky limbs, standing dutifully straight, tight-lipped smiles and an overall proper air about the both of them. It somehow reminds him of his four years at Hooli.

“Oh, it’s too much, isn’t it?” A woman’s voice calls from behind.

Jared quickly turns around. He recognizes Richard’s mother from the photos on the shelf. “Mrs. Hendricks, hello,” he says, only managing to mask his shock by the tail end of that sentence.

“Please, call me Caroline.” She holds a hand out to him. “It’s Jared, yes?”

“Yes. It’s so lovely to finally meet you, Caroline.” He takes her hand and she leans over to give him a light hug.

“Whatever my son’s told you about us, don’t believe him,” she continues, a low tone somewhere halfway between playful and grave.

“I’m embarrassed to admit, Richard actually hasn’t spoken much about you.”

Caroline raises a brow, intrigued. “Not even that we haven’t spoken in a while?”

“He might have mentioned that part,” Jared sheepishly responds. “However, he was light on the details.”

“Well, then you’ll know that it goes both ways. He’s barely made mention of you in his reply to our post. Just that you’d be joining him.”

She gestures for him to follow her, and so he does. “Jared, you’re going to have to catch me up,” she continues, with a theatrical raise of a hand. “Tell me all about you. How did the two of you meet? What’s my son been up to, these days?”

Jared tells Caroline that he and Richard met at Hooli, and that when Richard left, he followed him to Pied Piper. He talks about some of the stranger episodes of the company’s rough start, somehow managing to mention that they’ve been living together for as long as they’ve known each other, which is technically correct, and somehow managing to add in carefully-worded details of the events of their lives in an attempt to fit some version of the truth into the obvious ruse he’s unwittingly agreed to participate in.

Jared realizes he is going to have to lie through his teeth for the next week. He somehow feels more excited than any sensible person has any right to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Winifred Hendricks was absolutely pilfered from mousemind's own body of work. ([Ao3](http://archiveofourown.org/users/mousemind/pseuds/mousemind%22) / [tumblr](mouse-mind.tumblr.com))


	2. Act One, Scene Two

Humor often can't help but mingle with a bit of tragedy, from the twisting of truth into a grotesque revelation that’s often tinged with an air of cruelty. Sometimes it comes as a sobering bit of insight about the sheer absurdity of some supposed facts of life, wrenched into an elaborate yarn ending in a burst of cold realization. Most times, the grotesque revelation is that most people tend to be similar in some vulgar, prurient interests. That is, most people can be awful in identical ways. In a way, humor—be it sophisticated or crude—is about connection. Once a person comes into the circle where they find themselves _in on the joke_ , then they find that they belong.

Jared finds that the best position is always to play along with any joke.

In a life of rotating foster homes, playing along is crucial. Being ever-conscious of each small action, ever-present in every moment, ever-amenable to anybody who will so graciously have the very awkward, extremely sickly, unremarkable young _nobody_  is crucial. Knowing when best to nod and smile and shut up is crucial. Knowing whose side to take and who to point and laugh at is crucial. Learning a bit of cruelty, earning a bit of grit, mustering a lot of patience, is crucial.

On top of all this, Jared genuinely enjoys being in on some jokes. He absolutely delights in being on the knowing side of even the kind of jokes that manifest as long, elaborate, often cruel lies. Much of it is to do with the show of trust, or thread of connection. However, it is just as much to do with the way that most people tend to be similar in some vulgar, prurient interests.

And so, when Caroline Hendricks utters, “we were always so worried Richard wouldn’t be able to take care of himself. Always so fretful. I do hope he isn’t being a burden to his better half.” 

His instinct is to respond, “well, we’re both making our way up the learning curve.”

And when Caroline asks him if he had siblings and if they were ever as difficult as Richard and Winifred, Jared mentions that in every foster home there was no choice but to play along and roll with the punches.

“You were in the foster system?” She remarks quietly, with neither the horror nor pity he somehow expected to hear from her.

“Not for a very long time. Just a decade. Plenty of sets of siblings. None quite as charming as your children.”

“Don’t let them hear you say that.”

Jared listens to Caroline wax rhapsodic in a manner that reminded him of the way Richard tended to waxed wroth. Enthusiastic and somewhat rapid babbling that’s somehow carried effortlessly here, a graceful rush rather than a slow decline into some incoherent yet charming ramble. And in this rush of circuitous verbiage, Jared learns some awful thing he’d only secretly suspected: Caroline Hendricks regarded her son as if he were golden.

Managing expectations is tricky, especially when it comes to carelessly foisted aspirations. And he learns, having listened the many anecdotes and in-between segues Richard’s mother breezes through, that so much was expected of the Hendricks children.

It suddenly occurs to him that their long estrangement is odd. And so, when Caroline repeats, for the nth time, that she’s thankful she can finally reconnect with her son, that the whole family can be together again, Jared takes the opportunity to try to make sense of that oddness. 

“What changed, if I may ask?” He inquires.

“Well, I saw my son on the news and it struck me how much I’d missed him. We were awful and old-fashioned people and when we realized it, we thought it was too late. Actually, I’m not even convinced he’s here to let bygones be bygones,” Caroline replies, with a wave of a hand.

“Well, he is here. It isn’t too late?” Jared offers.

Caroline shakes her head. “You’re too generous. Richard is very, very good at keeping a grudge,” she declares, continuing with more dramatic hand-waving. “He once ended a long-drawn spat with his sister by detuning her violin strings right before a recital. Can you believe? And he barely says a word when the DeBoses come around because their son dislikes Nelson with a passion. I’m sure you know Nelson?”

Jared nods at the question, and then he shrugs. “He can’t be that angry.”

Caroline plants a hand on his shoulder and pouts in parts sympathy and amusement. “My dear, he’s told you nothing, has he?” She whispers, incredulous.

Jared shakes his head. He considers the tense hand gripping his shoulder and the pair of eyes staring at him in nervous concentration, as if to coax some answer out of him. For a moment he forgets whose side he should be on, in this long joke.

“Mrs. Hendricks, you’re in luck. I’m very used to mediating disputes. Especially ones that involve your son,” Jared says, truthfully.

“Jared, please. It’s Caroline.”

 

* * *

 

 

There’s a tired saying about the lies people tell: poke around long enough, and somebody's bound to find some sliver of truth. 

Richard often lies. At this very moment, he is very carefully holding up three lies threatening to poke a hole in the wall he has so carefully built up. The unadulterated truth in one side, and the truth he chooses to present in the other. One, that he didn’t have the money to fund Pied Piper without distress. Two, that he’d long gotten over his parents disowning him for six years. Three, that he has been in a happy relationship for over a year now, and that things are all looking up and going his way and basically everything is fine and great and pleasant, thank you very much. There’s also the layer of a lie under that last lie, which he will not put to words. The lie that he is not, in fact, interested in the person he brought with him to play along in some badly, hastily thought-out scheme. That the only reason that person is here is because nobody else would have played along and let him live it down. That this is all absolutely just a ruse. A performance. Maybe a performance of some ideal version of his life, but a performance nonetheless.

When Winnie asks, “why Jared? Checked out your landing page. Been stalking your company blog. That Dinesh guy is cuter.”

Richard simply replies, “Winnie, for the nth time, there’s no specific fucking reason. Stop asking.”

They make their way downstairs, out of the chill of their rooms into the blessings of a warm open fire radiating from the common area. As they pad through the steps, they overhear an awkward exchange.

_So is it Donald or Jared? I’m confused,_ a voice from down the hall inquires.

Winnie turns to Richard with an expression of mock disgust. _Donald?_ She mouths. He shoves her.

Another voice adds, _Harold, please. It was Donald in the letter but then Richard clarified but I’ll admit, I’m still a little confused._

Winnie points to her chest. _Same,_  she mouths, nodding her head.

_It’s actually… why don’t you just call me Jared?_  Somebody stutters.

Winnie shakes her head, in theatrical disapproval. Richard shoves her again. She shoves him back. Suddenly they are thirteen and sixteen, and they only speak in clashes and contretemps. The voices from the common room continue their conversation. They argue. They laugh. It’s been six years since his sister last laughed at him to his face. He hates that he missed it. He’s glad it’s no longer some distant part of some old life.

Then, they come into the common room to find their parents luxuriating on the plush settee, carefully watching over the guest wedged into an armchair, flipping through a leather-bound family photo album.

Richard realizes he’s been upstairs for about an hour. He tries to make an estimate of how many embarrassing stories his parents could have shared, given the combined speed of their rhetoric styles. In this microcosm of an economy of scale, he guesses that between the two of them, at least thirty horrible things have been said.

“Richard, we were just telling your boyfriend about that time Winifred changed all the clothes in your luggage for a trip to New York,” his father says.

At the mention of _boyfriend,_ Richard turns to Winnie, wide-eyed and nervous. Winnie smirks at him. He turns to Jared. Jared smiles at him, wide-eyed and innocent. Not even bothering to correct the supplied relationship status. Meaning: Jared already knows. And, also: he’s been playing along.

_Oh god._

Jared gives him a wink and turns back to the photos.

_Oh god._

His family leans Jared’s direction, inspecting the photos. They laugh.

“Every possible combination of clashing palettes,” Winnie sighs, wistfully. “My homage to Rothko.”

Richard tries, in vain, to keep his right eye from twitching. “Uh, any reason why you’re bringing this up?” He asks.

“We were just asking Jared if you had him pack something formal,” his mother responds. 

Harold turns to Jared. “It’s not excessively formal, mind you,” he says. “Just a society holiday gathering. A casual suit should do.”

“Ooh, Cecile DeBose told me Jim’s flying in from New York tomorrow. He’s probably gonna be there, too,” Winnie adds.

“You mentioned the DeBoses a while back,” Jared supplies, turning to Caroline. Then, he turns to Richard. “Something about Bighead?”

Winnie groans. “Yeah, Richie and Jim were good friends until Jim started hanging out with Chilton’s resident douchebags. Richie met Bighead at a cyber café and they became close and Jim started bullying Bighead because he absorbed his gang’s doucheyness,” she says, in one rapid breath.

“Winifred,” her mother scolds. “Language.” Then, she turns to Jared. “But yes, that’s just about the gist of it.” 

Richard shrugs. “Eh, so what?”

“You can get quite hostile, son,” Harold answers, unequivocally. “Low-simmer hostility, but still quite vicious.”

“I agree,” Jared says.

“Jared,” Richard scolds.

“Darling,” Jared chides.

_Oh god._

Richard looks away. “It’s not a big deal,” he says, defensively. Then, he turns to Jared. “Hey, could we talk? Privately, I mean.” He inquires, gesturing to the exit with a tilted nod. 

He exists and paces through the hall, letting his slippered feet drag along the marble. He hears Jared following close by, immediately turns around only to bump right into him. He looks up.

“So,” he says.

“Your parents seem to think we’re an item,” Jared points out.

“Yeah. Yup. They do. Uh-huh,” Richard stutters. He closes his eyes and exhales. Then, he looks up. “I’m sorry I promise I’ll explain later I know you’re playing along now but could you please keep playing along for the rest of the trip I swear I’ll make this easy,” he rasps, in a single quick string.

He tries to keep his gaze to the ceiling. He shuts his eyes again.

Then, Jared leans a little too close. “Richard… we’re like Mulder and Scully going undercover,” he whispers conspiratorially, somehow managing to sound utterly thrilled.

“You don’t mind?” Richard says, nervously backing away.

“I’m thrilled. Three of my foster brothers used to taunt me with vicious insults about my appearance, and I realized that if I just said yes to every taunt and played along, I had the upper hand. It’s like improv theater,” Jared explains.

Richard watches Jared’s eyes widen in delight. Somehow it feels like the chill from his bedroom and the warmth downstairs have come to internecine blows in the arena of his vitals. His pulse jumps into a sprint.

He wonders how the hell he’s going to manage to keep track of each version of the truth for the next few days.

“So, what’s our cover story?” Jared asks, unambiguously excited.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> James DeBose probably looks like Alfie Enoch. That is to say, also kind of a nerd.


	3. Act One, Scene Three

The Hendricks home is a lattice of marble and mahogany and crystal and bronze and fabric and perfume and foliage all properly fitted, impeccably kept, ever-grand and ever-swelling with the burn of history. To Winifred Hendricks, home loomed like an untiring leitmotif, from end to end—in every space; at every time—demanding to be performed. The melody: be exceptional. Also: stay in line. Stick to the concerto; this is not a fugue. This is baroque, not rock and roll. Brilliance is expected, always, constantly, unwaveringly, and especially when one is so lucky to find themselves in such a stately home, or any sort of home at all.

She watches the blustery view from the kitchen window, fixing on the shriveled sticks of what were once sweetspires and gorse, currently thinned out by the gloom of the season. Holidays are always so drab. It’s no wonder humans have managed to construct elaborate rituals that revolve around the delusion that winter is anything but a huge bummer. She is on her fourth cigarette. The chill from the open window has left her left arm slightly numb. It’s late. She hears light footsteps coming into the kitchen. Then, when she sees who it is, she slides a pack and a lighter across the gleaming slate counter.

“No thank you. I can’t smoke,” Jared whispers, careful and quiet, as if there were anybody sleeping nearby.

Winnie blinks at _can’t._ Then, when she says nothing, he continues, “I just couldn’t sleep. I hope you don’t mind that I’m giving myself a private tour. I promise not to steal anything.”

Winnie gives him a lopsided smile and looks around as if to check if anybody’s watching. As if she’s about to unburden herself of some private idea.

“Hey, why are you and your boyfriend sleeping in separate rooms?” She teases.

Jared opens his mouth as if to make a response. He shuts it instead. He tries again. He lets out a breath and tries again. “Well, your parents,” he finally supplies, stuttering.

Winnie giggles. “Relax, _Don_. I know what’s up,” she says.

She gestures to the slate and gives it a pat. She folds her legs to her chest as Jared sits up on the counter to join her.

“So, mom mentioned you were in the foster system,” she says, apropos of nothing. “Did Richard ever mention to you that I’m adopted?”

“No. There was never any need to bring that up, I think. Richard doesn’t really speak much about home. The most I hear are stories from Bighead, here and there. None of them too kind, unfortunately. I actually learned that you’re a concert violinist from Bighead. That’s about as much as I know.”

“Ah, lil' Bighetti. Such a good egg, that one.”

They sit in silence and watch the thick, whitened air puff out and curl from out the window. The cigarette burns out. Winnie pulls up the pack but thinks better of it and puts it away. 

“Your name is Donald but you let everyone call you Jared,” she observes.

He shrugs and says nothing.

“My god, Donald. Do you say yes to everything?” She whispers.

Jared keeps his gaze fixed to the frost outside. “Have you ever been told you should be grateful you were taken in at all?” He asks.

Winnie looks at him, incredulous. The inquiry stings, and she knows it’s supposed to. She frowns at him, in jest, as if to say _of course I have._ He frowns back, in a mixture of amusement and commiseration. Somehow they both get it.

Then, she lets out a laugh. “Jesus, is that why Richie thought he was gonna get away with this? Are you like his _Microserf_?”

Jared shakes his head. “No, I’m not like that anymore. I grew up,” he beams, proudly.

“Whatever, _Don._  You never outgrow that.”

“There’s still time for you,” Jared replies, with mock pity.

Winnie waves her hands up defiantly, like a conductor demanding  _forte_. “Never!”

Then, Jared leans closer. “You know,” he says, slowly. Carefully. Now it’s his turn to check for an unwanted audience. 

Winnie holds her breath.

“Everyone in Pied Piper’s formed a hypothesis about why Richard is the way he is. Why he’s always so anxious. Why he’s always shutting himself out.” 

“Can’t a guy just be constantly fearful about a crappy world? Honestly.”

“We have to evaluate our weaknesses as partners. Also, it’s harmless banter. ”

Winnie leans back on the backsplash tiles. “So you’re here because you want to know what his deal is?”

Jared smiles, bright and glassy-eyed. Like he’s suddenly twelve and earnest and untainted by a crappy world.

“I think I already know,” he responds. “And, I’m here because I want to help.”

“Careful, Donald,” Winnie sighs, half-joking, half earnest. “Richie tends to fall in love with boys who are too nice to him.”

 

* * *

 

Here’s what Jared learns, on day one: the Hendrickses are all geniuses. On top of that, they are all—in ways both unique and identical—somewhat neurotic. Parents obsessively trying to maintain an impeccable gestalt. Children scrambling to live up to the demand for perfection. He somehow finds the opportunity to speak to each of them, privately and at length, over the next two days. He learns that each Hendricks has individually appraised him or herself as the lemon of the lot, as if there were some secret contest to be the biggest disappointment while outwardly taking great pains to excel.

It is somehow both horrifying and fascinating to know. Like a gripping regency drama of elegant people battling their interior malaise. It feels ethereal and otherworldly, yet somehow genuinely heart-rending.

There’s something tragic about watching, for the nth time, a parent’s expression shift to discomfort, for a fraction of a fraction of a second, the moment he does anything outwardly affectionate. For example, taking his fake partner’s hand. Then the moment quickly goes and he remembers this: they are all trying their best.

One morning, the air is gentle, despite the enduring chill of the season. He and Richard go for a walk through the whitened streets.

“I’m really, really glad you invited me,” Jared says. Quietly, earnestly, everything-else-in-between-ly. “Thank you.”

Richard breathes out a nervous, embarrassed laugh. “I sort of figured you’d…” he says, unable to form the right words, letting a wave of a gloved hand explain the rest of it. “Y’know.”

He watches the expression on Richard’s face dance around several versions of mild distress. He stops on his tracks, right in front of a view of a frozen pond.

“Richard, are you trying to apologize right after I’ve thanked you?”

Richard exhales, and a puff of frost comes out. “I want to say I wasn’t trying to take advantage. But I was,” he stutters.

Jared laughs. “I don’t mind.”

Then, Richard takes his hand. Jared can feel his heart start to hammer in his chest, but he only looks down at their linked hands with confusion. He looks at Richard and wants to ask if this is still part of the performance. He’s hoping the answer is _no._ Maybe all of the micro-expressions he’s been keeping track of is making him absorb a very Hendricks-style paranoia, but somehow, somehow, he thinks Richard might have just tried to lean slightly, slightly closer, for a fraction of a second, before pulling away.

And then, Richard says, “uh, I’m just trying to get used to it. For, y’know.”

Jared only smiles. “Okay,” he whispers. He says nothing more.

They walk on, hands linked, arms swaying.

He cradles a cup of coffee and lets the heat warm his bare hands as he listens to Richard talk about Winnie. About how he was always jealous she saw every pursuit through. About how improvization seems to come naturally to her, _she tried to turn Four Seasons in to prog-rock, did you know, and Vivaldi’s Winter is actually kind of metal, I don’t know how she does it, I can’t even adjust out of tabs versus spaces and I hate it._  He talks about how he’s always struggling to keep up with everybody and how he’s never been cut out for the kind of social situations that are somehow a staple for people of their status. About how that’s somehow translated to latching onto mathematics and linguistics and code and engineering, where everything is rigid and predictable and controllable and safe. About how he can’t shake himself out of wanting everything to be rigid and predictable and controllable and safe.

Now would be a good opportunity to ask if they could start over and write this down as a real date instead of a fake one. Instead, Jared talks about how uncertainty isn’t all it’s cut out to be. He talks about moving from home to home, walking on eggshells every waking moment, trying to make sure he’s earned his keep, knowing how to improvise in the sense that he knew whose side to take if he ever wanted to get out of a situation able-bodied, or at the very least, alive. Then he spoke of how Winnie somehow reminded him of his late mother, who worked sporadic shifts in the ER, who eventually smoked her lungs black to futility, who was always generous just because, where he was only ever generous as a form of transaction.

“Is that what this is?” Richard teases. “A transaction? What do you get out of this?”

“Well, company for the holidays,” Jared says. “For once.”

He watches Richard as micro-expressions come and go from his face. He watches him slide his hand across the table, slightly, then flinch, then pull back.

Eventually they walk past Richard’s old school, and Jared asks about whatever happened between him and Jim DeBose. Richard kicks at the snow and remarks that he hates it. That it’s always romanticized because it’s beautiful but holidays are full of bullshit rituals and snow is dirty and uncomfortable and inconvenient. Jared laughs and asks again.

Here’s what Jared learns, on day four: that Richard Hendricks, fifteen years of age, was utterly smitten with his only friend. Jim was sharp and he was quick-witted and he was patient with Richard when everyone else was not. He was kind and the only way Richard ever knew to repay kindness was to do everything that was asked of him, unquestioningly, unwaveringly. And the moment Richard realized he wanted something for himself, for the first time in his life—not something that was expected or asked or demanded of him—he tried to dive into something uncertain. And then it blew up in his face.

Richard shrugs. “Well, he didn’t tell anybody, so there’s that.”

Jared wonders if it’s ever all right to feel deeply for someone who was still hung up over somebody else. He says nothing, only smiling, holding his hand out in sympathy. And Richard takes his hand. And they look at the brimstone and slate covered in powder.

Then, they walk on, hands linked, arms swaying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Microserfs is a novel by Douglas Coupland. Despite being published in 1995, the plot and details share striking similarities with Silicon Valley. Winnie uses it to mean "yes man."
> 
> At this point, there is almost nothing about the Winifred Hendricks here that resembles the one supplied by [mouse-mind](mouse-mind.tumblr.com). Apologies.
> 
> They're all improvizing the same way I am making this all up as I go along.


	4. Act Two, Scene One

 Caroline operates on a strict routine. Repetition keeps things reliable, reassuring, controlled as the world turns, ever-chaotic, ever-stochastic. Each morning she will pull up an orange vial from the nightstand. She’ll down the day’s dose and wait as her blood vessels strain in anticipation of relief. She will, for the first hour, operate within and without, simultaneously in repose and secure. The rest of the day, she will move in a world of clearly marked boundaries, exhaling in the coolness of logic, of fretwork with unyielding dogma wedged in the fissures, of axiomatic truths rigid and practiced and perfected. A world of sense and consistency, neither loose nor petrified. A world where everything isn’t torn asunder by meteoric whims or dragged under dysphoric tides. A world away from fractured echoes, out of fogs, into clarity.

Today, as she waits for her gooseflesh to settle and her mind to stop whirring, she pads downstairs with a roll of tissue and two small boxes.

Caroline has never been one for ornamental things burdened with metaphor. Not for carved stones with implicit emotional heft, not for occasion-specific flowers forced to bloom out season and flung far from their provenance, not for promises carved into rings, or wholesale ideas of togetherness pushed onto pine trees. And yet she is here, wrapping a pair of old, once-broken cups up in chintz tissue. Ivory with brown specks from age, shards soldered with gold running through the contours like a spiderweb. Evidence of damage lending a new beauty to an old, broken thing.

Objects as gestures as customary metaphors are no substitute for the promises they contain. Overall, the cups are a silly thing.

As morning rolls in, light begins to slant from the latticework frames, casting separate pools of light over the other side of the room, in fractured frames.

Someone comes into the room. Caroline quickly shoves the boxes aside and they fall down with a thump.

“Oh, sorry, was I intruding on something?” Jared says.

Caroline breathes out a sigh of relief. “Not really. Come in, I was just hoping for company. I dread silence. Everything always sounds so fuzzy. I can practically hear the dust floating by.”

He strides into the room and sits on a chair across from her. She considers his straightened posture, hands folded neatly over his knees, chin held just a little high, the whole controlled comportment of someone adjusting to make room, or squeezing into a tight enclosure.

“You look uncomfortable,” she says, trying not to wince.

“I had a foster mother who used to tell me that I wasn't much different from an old man. Partially the posture, partially the dietary restrictions. Mostly the fragile skeletal system. This is really just the way I hold myself,” Jared replies, with a helpless shoulder shrug.

Caroline talks about a time when her children were much, much younger. Winifred and Richard taking on the customary habits of much, much older people, walking in slow deliberate steps with a stiff posture and hands clasped behind their backs, Richard displaying a pedantry that surpassed his own father’s, Winifred acquiring an ear for the baroque, the both of them constantly skipping ahead of classes, seemingly ecstatic to meet old age, whatever romances it promised. And how it had been exciting to expect the world of children so gilded. That is, until it wasn't.

And Jared talks about his mother. Josephine, who spoke with a hoarse voice, walked with a hitch in her step, started her workday by putting her son to bed and ended most days staying awake for when he comes back home from school. Remembering the dissonant air of their old apartment—the smell of soap and smoke, the silence as comfortable as it was fraught. Josephine always taught him new skills to take care of himself, as if there were some urgent need, as if she already _knew_  what was about to happen to him. He spoke of how his mother always seemed to handle everything so well, deferring any troubles and packing it all in tar and nicotine and exhaling it all out in shaky breaths. How—when he came home one day to find that she hadn’t come home from the hospital, and in fact wouldn’t be coming home anymore—he supposes the most he could do for her was to handle everything well, too. And, how he’d forced himself into old age, at only twelve, somehow fearing it at first, only later learning to embrace it. And, how he’d gotten used to being tired, and leaning in, and knowing resilience. And, how he’s noticed he and Richard are much the same, somehow. Always uncertain and always tired and always having to rush out of helplessness while moving about the world carefully, measuredly, making sure to always fit in.

Caroline has never been one for metaphor, on the whole. But at that moment, she considers the fractured light cast over the other side of the room, over the person across her, pallid skin ghost-like and made eerier with the cage-like light cutting across him. How it is somehow a little too familiar. The world doesn’t shift in any unusual way, but somehow it’s as if the ground’s slid and something in Caroline’s mind clicks into place.

 

* * *

 

Something’s amiss.

There are at least three things about the scene before him that are definitely, definitely _not_  part of the real, concrete details of his life, in its present state. The lights are dim and he’s somehow in his room at the hacker hostel and there’s a discounted cash flow model on his laptop screen. There’s a knee knocking into his, elbows slightly pressing at his side. Then, a hand over his knee. He breathes. He blinks. He turns his head.

“I think it's about time I admitted this,” Jared starts. “When I came over earlier, I hadn’t initially planned on asking for a job.”

“Then what were you planning on doing?” Richard whispers, straining to get the words out.

For a moment, there’s nothing but the sound of the laptop fan whirring. The air in the room is unseasonably hot. He might be breathing a little too heavily, nervous and anxious and fretful and agitated and excited and a swirl of other emotions blustering through him, internecine and intense.

“Richard… we both know the truth.”

Something’s amiss. Supposedly, they’ve only known each other for a few hours.

Why does it feel like he’s been waiting for this for longer?

“You do?”

“Absolutely.”

More importantly: what is it about this that's making everything seem suspiciously pornographic?

He’s pulled up tightly by the wrists, pulse scaling high, until he’s pushed back, dragged across the table, knocking over the sheets and pens and assorted office supplies making up their mess of an all-nighter set-up, pushed back and back until he’s pinned against the wall by a hand on each shoulder and hips pressed against his own.

“How long have you…?” He manages to stutter out.

“I’ve always known, silly,” Jared sighs against his ear.

His hoodie is off. His shirt is off. His pants slide down. He is pressed against the wall, squirming and breathing in shallow hitches. He looks up and the room is suddenly a whirl of color, incoherent and dazzling and strange. He reaches down to tug Jared by the hair but it suddenly feels _off_.

Then he looks down.

There’s someone else on his knees, staring him in the eye. Someone he knew years and years and years ago, from some old life and some dead version of himself.

Something’s definitely amiss.

“I’ve always known,” someone else says, low and soundless and drenched in disgust.

Suddenly his vision blackens and all he can hears is his mother and his father wailing dramatically, the way they always seem to wail in the back of his head, even if they’ve never actually raised their voice or shot him anything more than cold silence.

Then there is, suddenly, the sensation of falling down an endless pit.

Richard blinks and his eyes snap open.

He’s back in Tulsa.

The air is cold.

His sheets are wet.

_Well, it can’t get any worse than this_ , he thinks.

And then he remembers the day has only begun. And it’s a very specific day, with a very specific lineup of events. He sits up and wonders how he will trudge through the rest of the day.

And how he trudges through is this: avoiding absolutely any form of eye contact with any sort of person within a three-meter radius, raising the overall unease in any room or in the middle of going through the motions of any custom or conversation by responding in clipped sentences, walking in measured strides because if he can walk with precision he can get through the day without any sort of slip-up. And everything is normal. Winnie shoots looks of utter dismay his way, but otherwise everything is normal. His parents frown at him a few times during breakfast, but that’s expected.

Jared keeps staring at him. Jared keeps sitting too close that their arms brush. Jared takes him aside and asks him why he seems even more nervous than usual, and if there’s anything he could do to help. ( _Of course._ )

For a moment, Richard considers leaning in and finally, finally getting this over with. This frustrating, tortuous dancing around, in words spoken and unspoken and actions taken and not taken. He considers taking a handful of that neatly combed hair, getting close enough until the air is warm and their skin flushes red and they’re finally, finally rid of all the conventions and assumptions in this overstretched exchange of half-truths and mostly-lies, finally rid of the dressing and ornament and sundry distracting them from whatever this is they've been dancing around. Unless it's just been him all along. Then Richard is fucked, metaphorically speaking.

_I’ve always known, silly,_  Richard's mind replays, just to taunt him.

All he has to do is get through the day.

All he has to do is get through that stupid gathering nobody is _actually_  obligated to attend, if only certain people—that is, the kind of people ever-present in his early life—hadn’t thrived so much in tradition and customary gestures that seem less about whichever act of charity put at the ostensible fore, and more about sizing people up and making sure everything is in order.

But it is late and he’s put on his tux and he has to grin and bear it.

Nothing new, in other words.

 

* * *

 

In Vassar, everyone was promised a gilded life. Maybe not the kind drenched in excess, but expansive in its stretch possibilities. Not necessarily gilded the way the Wyndham estate seems to be, from corner to corner, brightly lit. Men dressed in charcoal suits and burgundy ties, women with hair like clouds, draped pastels, crystals hanging from their ears and wrists, all dissimilar in similar ways, speaking in an identical cadence, regarding everyone else with much the same look, repeating the same set of words, floating about the marbled floor like petals on a wet bough. Whatever the case, it simultaneously does and does not remind Jared of Vassar, for a multitude of reasons that do not immediately make sense.

He looks down at his own olive suit and considers how it must stick out.He turns to look at his fake-date, who seems to not seem so out of place. The air is not warm but feels like it anyway. People shuffle into a large hall and there he is, rooted a few meters from the archway, nervously staring at the whole of it all.

“Hey, you look like something’s up?” Richard asks, making an awkward observational detour on the way that somehow makes the implicit _something_  seem much more disconcerting.

Jared is only slightly afraid, is all. Within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the sight of inexhaustible elegance. When his fake-date takes his hand and he notices it’s been trembling, slightly, he figures he is at least not alone.

“Don’t worry, I’m nervous too,” Richard whispers. "Just pretend everyone's an asshole."

"I'm secretly counting on it," Jared whispers back.

And so they stand there for a few more minutes as more people shuffle in, making dry commentary comparing it all to the ridiculousness of the Bay Area’s own version of fancy galas. The green superfood-festooned, Eastern spirituality themed, hyper-capitalist visioner-filled, not-outwardly-luxurious-but-still-outrageously-excessive dissonance of it all. It’s only when Winnie strides out from inside the hall in her stiletto-heeled, pale cream slouch-suited wonder that they even bother to come inside. She regards them both with a slanted glance, proceeding to pull them in with a firm tilt of a head.

“Look, I’ve been going through the obligatory small talk and dishing and there’s only so much two-faced  _Winnie, have you made first chair yet_ a girl can take before she’s bummed out,” Winnie groans.

“Winnie, we’ve only been here for twenty minutes,” Richard points out. “How can you already be bummed out?”

“Jared already looks bummed out!” Winnie retorts, defensively.

“Oh no, I’m fine. Just overwhelmed. Everybody’s so effortlessly elegant,” Jared clarifies.

“Please. _Effortlessly elegant_. We’re getting you an Old Fashioned,” Winnie sighs.

“I don’t really drink,” Jared says, through uneasy laughter.

“You _can’t smoke_  and now you _don’t drink_? Kid, you need to get inebriated. It’s the only way to survive these things.”

She leads the both of them further in, heels clinking, somehow fielding obligatory niceties with a breathy, faux-delighted greeting, some light ego-stroking of whatever their present company’s endeavor _du jour_ happens to be, casually showing off their Bay Area guests as _next year’s tech_ , waving them off and groaning immediately the moment they’re out of earshot.

“Partners?” Gasps an old schoolmate, raising her champagne flute excitedly. “Oh Richard, you know I kind of always knew. Jesus, you haven’t been around in ages and now look at you. Saw you on the Bloomberg cycle. _Belle of the ball._ And you two are so cute! Good for you, good for you.”

She turns to Jared. “I mean they say don’t mix love and business, but I guess the heart wants what the heart wants.”

“Absolutely,” Jared responds, somehow slipping more comfortably into conversations the moment he’s aware he has to pretend he is somebody else entirely.

They go through more and more of exchanges, Richard pretending to know who they’re speaking to, the customary catching up and light bragging. Jared somehow finds himself adding more and more detail with regards to their fake relationship, which almost sound nothing too drastically different from the truth, such as how long they’ve known each other, how long they’ve been living together, the exchanging of clothes, minutiae like being mindful about restrictive diets, and then some. Each time, he notes that Richard only manages to verify everything with a stuttered “yup.” And every separate-yet-similar instance is just as amusing, so he casually adds more and more asides.

At some point in the evening, Winnie emerges out of nowhere, redirecting them to that bar they were supposed to have gotten to without much incident.

Which is funny, considering who happens to be slouching on a point right along the semicircular surface, lingering about listlessly, somehow managing to look like he is simultaneously engrossed in small talk while watching the ice in his glass melt out. Then, he looks up and spots the three of them. He excuses himself and makes his way over.

“Hey,” James DeBose says, somehow packing enthusiasm and nerves and compunction all in a single word. “Winifred. Richard. It’s been ages.”

“Jim,” Winnie replies, stiffly.

“And it’s Jared, right? Eloise Ang was just telling me about the both of you. Practically gushing.” He turns to Richard. “Also reminded me how much of a massive asshole I was.”

Winnie coughs and they all turn to her.

“Anyway if you two are going to catch up, I promised this guy a drink,” she says, tugging Jared by the sleeves.

“Say sorry ten million times, James!” She calls from behind, dragging Jared further from their circle and closer to the bar.

 

* * *

 

Richard watches Winnie drag Jared away. Part of him is a little relieved. At least he won’t be present for whatever dressing-down he’s inevitably going to have to endure. He turns back to Jim, who has been peering at him from behind his glass of scotch with a sideways glance like he’s already being sized up. He looks down at his water goblet and swirls the contents awkwardly.

There’s a flustered minute where they both seem to be starting, aborting, and restarting attempts at casual conversation.

“I heard you’re working on fully homomorphic crypto schemes. A minute per thousand inputs?” Richard finally manages.

Jim shoots him a smile that’s halfway sliding into a smirk, a familiar look that settles him down and somehow translates into a subconscious shifting into a previous version of himself.

“Richard, have you been Googling me?” Jim asks, with that awful blend of sincerity and smugness that Richard has never quite figured what to make of.

“Twitter. Some Verge feature?” Richard explains, with a nonchalant shrug.

“Well, I don’t actually have to search for you. You’re everywhere. On your way to setting the standard for data compression and encoding,” Jim replies, bright and enthused and sounding utterly impressed.

“Meh,” he replies, trying to sound like he isn’t flattered at all.

“Look at that. Setting the standard for cloud compression and encryption. Controlling information pipelines at the crest of big data. God, imagine that. It’s thrilling.”

“Sounds a little super-villainy, don’t you think?”

Jim holds his hands up in finger frames, eyes crinkling in concentration and amusement. “Well, you don’t exactly look the super-villain type. Nobody will ever suspect a thing. It’s perfect.”

Richard makes a poor attempt at drowning his laughter with a gulp of water. “Sure,” he says into his goblet.

They exhaust the gamut of customary commentary, from the atonal mess and thrill of Bay Area tech, to New York tech only ever bleeding edge in press releases, their parents, their sisters, the weather in Tulsa, politics, old friends, old enemies, their old lives, before finally getting to the main event.

“No really, god, I really am sorry,” Jim says. “I was an absolute moron and a piece of shit and the fact that you’re even speaking to me is nothing short of gracious. I’m not being disingenuous. I’m not the groveling type, Richard Hendricks.”

“This isn’t uncomfortable at all,” Richard comments dryly. He starts chewing on ice.

Jim looks over his shoulder, scanning the view. “Your partner’s missing.”

Richard glances laterally; one sweeping look of the hall, in wide scope. The gala fuzzes out into a blur of sapphire and pale pink and charcoal petals dancing to distant strings, buzzing with incoherent chatter, circling like mosquitoes under the bright fire of bronze chandeliers. Everybody looks similarly different, differently similar. Jared and Winnie are nowhere to be found.

“Winnie’s probably just showing him off,” he mutters.

“It’s kind of loud here, isn’t it?” Jim says, gesturing to a small exit with a nod of a head.

They make their way out of the hall, right in front of a pair of framed grille doors leading to a balcony. There’s a hint of foliage peeking from out of the frost. The floor is carpeted and Richard rubs his soles back and forth on it, noting the bronze frames. Maybe he could zap his hands with static every time he said anything stupid.

“Bighetti hasn’t flown back here, has he? I kind of need to grovel at his feet, too. And I just might. God, listen to me, the air is practically dense with secondhand embarrassment, this is all just unequivocally pathetic. He’s doing well though, is he not? I mean, there’s Hooli. Nucleus. XYZ. All of that,” Jim rambles, with bursts of mildly deferent hand-waving.

“He’s definitely good,” Richard replies, a little too quietly. “His mom flew over this year to see his new place. They’re good.”

Jim starts laughing, until the laugh turns into something that sounds bitter, until it turns into a frustrated groan. Richard blinks outwardly, but he gets it, a little bit.

“Hell, it’s just, I don’t know how Hooli operates but, come on! I read that Wired profile and I don’t keep tabs on Bighetti but there are some glaring flaws.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Richard says, blankly.

“I mean: is it a red herring! Is Hooli hiding something? Is he a scapegoat for some legal snafu? I’m sure there’s something up. I mean, for one, obvious flag: why isn’t he at your company?” Jim inquires, rapid-fire.

Richard only smirks and raises his hands as if to say, _fuck if I know._

“Sorry. He’s a decent friend and I was going to apologize but I’ve just torqued back into cad territory.” It’s somehow simultaneously an apology and a defense.

“It’s not funny,” Richard says, sounding amused despite himself anyway.

“God, I’m sorry. I know. I was unfair. But I was just looking out for you.”

Richard puts his fingers to his temples. “Now I _really_  don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh come on, you absolutely do.”

“What? Proper breeding bullshit? Jesus.”

“I mean the less than mentally stimulating company,” Jim says, half grinning and wincing in feigned faux disgust. “The soda slush brain-freeze, wading around in the dirt, mold growing in the sunlight kind of human interactions you practically marinated in. Bighetti is nice but, honestly, he’s kind of a simpleton.”

Richard exhales and looks away. He keeps his gaze fixed to the whitened glass. “Who the fuck cares?” He whines in frustration.

“Sorry, I’ll change the subject. Tell me about your partner. How’d you meet?”

Richard almost stumbles into a ramble, where he _almost_ says, _he's a lunatic who jumped ship from Hooli to my sinking raft of a start-up._ _I don’t know what his deal is, but there is absolutely no good reason to keep sticking around and putting up with my bullshit, and every single instance I’ve been an utter moron he’s somehow managed to save my moron fucking self. Also, I’ve given him no good reason to place a crushingly exorbitant amount of faith in me more as a person and less as a return on investment and he doesn’t even seem to be interested in cashing in on anything. I don’t actually know if this is some manifestation of severe emotional scarring from my goddamn family and I’ve been chasing after the notion of unconditional security all my life, but anyway, yes, Jared is amazing, I’m in love with him, maybe one day I’ll get to letting him know that in earnest, maybe when I figure out how to stop being such an idiot._

“Err, Hooli,” is what actually comes out of his mouth.

“Jumped ship to be with you?” Jim replies, less of an inquiry and more of a tease.

Richard laughs it off, like it’s not at all a ridiculous thing to do.

“Uh… yup,” he says, with difficulty.

“Wow. Well, Richard, you are still _quite_  something,” Jim responds, a declaration cresting all the way to the very height of buttering-up.

Something about the moment—the specific string of words uttered lowly and emphatically, the slight chill wafting in from the evening air through a slight crack in the window, the way the lights in the corner they’ve wedged themselves into are dimmer and warmer than the rest of the space—compels Richard to somehow blurt out the truth, practically force it out of him even.

“God, this is fucking stupid,” he says, laughing bitterly, a little vexed but who cares if it’s obvious. “Jared and I? We aren’t together. He came here because, here’s the thing, I don’t know if anybody’s told you but I came out to my parents and they very, very graciously shut me out—for six years, by the way, which is a long fucking time—and suddenly, what, they wanted to fucking see me again? I needed to piss them off! Because I’m petty and vindictive and part of my just wanted to see them squirm because, I don’t know, I don’t fucking know. Anyway, no, we aren’t together, I’ve been lying through my teeth this whole time.” He stops when he sees Jim’s eyes light up and continues, “no, I’m not telling you what Hooli’s doing with Bighead. And fine, you’re right, I waded in quicksand for too long and it’s turned me into a bit of an idiot and now I’m still a fucking mess.”

Jim say nothing, only frowning in genuine concern.

Richard holds his hands up in defeat. “You win,” he hisses through gritted teeth.

“I didn’t take you here to gloat. Okay, maybe I kind of missed our pissing contests, but I didn’t take you aside to gloat.”

His lips stretch into a smile as he makes a pretty obvious attempt to hold his laughter in.

“What's so funny?”

“Gosh, I don't know. I was kind of afraid you'd become this completely different person. But you're still the same. After all this time. Sharp. Weird. Petty. Same old Richard Hendricks.”

Richard knows he’s being cornered and somehow he lets it happen anyway, and if it’s more than a little slightly confusing, given their tortuous history, that part doesn’t seem to occur to him, because he’s too busy just staring.

“What are you doing?”

“Well, you just admitted you’re actually _not taken_. Also, I’ve kind of been thinking…”

__

* * *

 

After the nth round of drinks and nth non-conversation schmoozing they’ve slogged through, Jared finally manages to yank Winnie by the arm and insist they check up on Richard, partially because he might just be inebriated enough to make some grand declaration he hasn’t clearly thought through, mostly because his sentences have begun to take on the weight and shape of Mad Libs-style incoherence.

They make their way across the room, checking and checking, Winnie giggling and joking that they’ve _gotten a room if-you-know-what-I-mean_ , until he finally spots Richard wedged in a corner outside, getting to know an old friend, intimately. There’s absolutely no reason to feel alarmed by the fact that Richard’s pressed against the window with a hand to his chest. Nothing else is happening. There’s no reason to feel any distress because they aren’t actually an item. This has all been a ruse.

He absolutely does not look like he’s in shock. He’s all right. He can handle this.

“What did I tell you? I mean, it’s not a room, but…” Winnie mutters, somewhere in the area disappointed and slightly uneasy.

She turns to Jared, then to the corner they’re eyeing, doing a double take, eyes widening and widening.

“Oh my god. Oh my god,” she breathes.

Then, he turns and starts walking. Through the perimeter, past the crowd, past the blur of fabric and crystal and smoothened skin and flowing hair of every flawless, sumptuous, immaculate, elegant thing, beautiful and perfect and foreign and untouchable. And there he is, an outsider still, a stranger in a strange land with no tether to any part. Floating aimlessly, simultaneously within and without. So if he may be excused, he would like to exit as quietly as possible, without disrupting anything at all.

“Jared! Ugh, Don!” Winne calls. “Come back here!”

He stops and turns to face her. Then, he sighs, turns heel and keeps walking. His feet fall to the floor in time to the hammering in his chest. He turns a corner into arches leading down a darkened narrow path. Hints of bronze carvings glint from deep inside, eerie and foreboding. The air whirls through it in a roar. The sound of his steps come out triplicate, as if he were being followed closely, by a deeply unsettling cadre of light-footed men taking quick, long, awkward strides.

Winnie’s voice echoes down the darkened corridor. “Donnie, come on, don’t run away from me, you literally will not find your way out of this place. It’s a McMansion of Winchester horror house proportions.”

Jared stops and turns to face her. Winnie catches up.

“You liar,” she hisses. She presses an accusatory finger on his chest. “Yooouuuuuu…liar. You’re not just here because you want to help.”

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, raising his hands helplessly. “There’s no point in hiding it now: I’ve always been an opportunist.” His mouth twists into a smile, attempting to mask the embarrassment from the admission.

Winnie shakes her head and crinkles her nose at him, a mixture of condescension and amusement. “This is really sad to hear,” she mutters blankly, unimpressed.

Then, he turns around and covers his face in his hands. “Oh Donald, you’re such an idiot,” he groans. “What were you thinking?”

Winnie walks up to him and shakes him by the shoulders. “Come on, snap out of it.”

Jared drops his hands from his face. He tries to find Winnie’s eyes in the dark. Virescent orbs floating alight in a deep black stretch, narrowing and narrowing as she squints at him in fierce faux irritation.

“Please hold me,” he says, soundlessly.

She wraps her arms around him and they stay still for a moment that stretches and stretches, Winnie’s hands smoothing his hair down, slightly swaying but otherwise motionless, in comfortable silence. Then, she starts to laugh, softly.

“I’m glad my distress can at least entertain one of us,” Jared mutters.

Winnie laughs even louder. “I’m sorry, it’s just…” she says, laughing as she fumbles through each word. “My brother is a nerd caught between a nice liar and a rich douche. He’s Jane the Virgin.”

He sighs and says nothing.

“I’m on Team Jared, if that’s any consolation.”

He groans in actual disgust. She keeps on laughing.

“I’m sorry for finding this funny,” she whispers to his chest. “I mean, it kind of is. Schadenfreude isn’t exactly my brand of entertainment, but you’ve gotta admit, it’s a little funny.”

The laughter echoes through the space and morphs from a deeply uncomfortable sound into something absurd, absorbing, and infectious. Jared begins to laugh, too.

“I’ll admit, it’s mortifying but it is truthfully amusing,” he says.

“I officially pass the torch on to you. You are now the most embarrassing outsider in this gross-ass shindig.”

They both laugh and laugh, a bitter effort to ease through some deep shared misery. They hold that moment, until the music from afar stops and starts anew. Strings and keys glide from down the hall, a soft chromatic rise, the sound tinkling gently, playfully, in quick lilts grand waves. 

They go quiet again.

“Aww, do you hear that?” Winnie breathes brightly, delighted at the sound. “Debussy.”

She pulls away, pats at his shoulders down to his sides, an awkward attempt to smooth his suit jacket out. She reaches over and straightens his tie. “Ask Richie for a dance,” she says, a soft yet forceful demand.

“Winnie, I think you’re not seeing the problem here. He’s interested in somebody else. There’s no point.”

Winnie raises her hands up in frustration. “Ask anyway!” She groans.

“Winifred,” Jared whines.

“Donald, please. Jimmy is a douchebag. Richie longs for kindness and you are so kind. And, you’re his boyfriend. His fake boyfriend, but his boyfriend nonetheless.”

“Maybe after the Debussy,” Jared teases. “I’m not exactly familiar with the appropriate footwork for romantic arabesque.”

Winnie slaps her face, in secondhand embarrassment. “You’re ridiculous,” she mutters.

“And just when you were rooting for me. I’m in dismay,” he responds, a hand to his chest in mock disappointment.

Winnie holds her hand out to him. “Come on,” she says softly.

And they walk out of the corridor, hands linked tightly as they step into the light.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Caroline's gift is a pair of cups repaired [kintsugi-style,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kintsugi) which is about exposing breakage as an indelible part of an object, turning it into an ornamental feature that's almost like the pottery equivalent of a [ 19th Century-vogue dueling scar.](http://www.vice.com/read/frauleins-dig-them-0000573-v22n2)
> 
> My idea of what Vassar is like comes mostly from jokes so, what the fuck.
> 
> There's some exaggeration about the way homomorphic encryption works. But anyway, this is a fanfic.
> 
> Jane the Virgin's first and second seasons featured a love triangle that can be summed up pretty much the way Winnie did.


	5. Act Two, Scene Two

Shock is funny, Richard thinks. Always strange yet familiar anyway, somehow.

It snatched away clear days when the sun was high and the weather was fair and nothing could possibly go wrong. It sometimes snuck up in lulls, when the world felt like it might have stopped torquing about, and all was right. Shock came in moments where he finally mustered up the courage to declare something that he could barely put to words, before. To finally feel not so much like a sheet carried about by the heavy-handed breeze, but something with its own weight to bear. Shock came on calm mornings and turned them into the coldest day of the year.

He’s somehow grown accustomed to the casual upending of his world, as ironic as it is.

There’s a hand on his chest pressing him back, steering him into a spot right where the wall meets the chilled glass window.

Richard can’t help but laugh. He laughs, winded and surprised and slightly vexed around the edges. He tries to wheeze out an apology in between bursts.

“Jesus, this is just…” he says. Or makes an attempt to. If it's coherent through the laughter, he has no idea.

“I can’t believe this is funny to you,” Jim interrupts, nettled.

“…really fucking uncomfortable.”

Richard covers his face and laughs into his hands until it tapers into a few short breaths.

Jim steps back. “Well, I guess now I know how it feels,” he huffs. He dusts himself off and starts examining his fingernails in a show of nonchalance, but he looks mortified anyway.

Richard opens his mouth to object but only shakes his head.

“What’s this really about?” He demands.

Jim looks up and sighs a dramatically exhausted sigh.

“Chasing after the ostensibly simpler past? Retreading old ground as a coping mechanism? God, I don’t know. I’ve been putting on a performance for a hivemind all my life.”

 Richard shoots him an unsympathetic frown.

“Your garden variety quarter life crisis,” Jim clarifies.

The frown sinks lower. A half-hearted shrug. A succinct "meh," is all he has to say.

“And what about you? All this posturing and cage-rattling, for what? Come on. You can’t possibly be going through all the trouble just to piss your family off,” Jim inquires.

“Well, no. I mean yes. I mean, it is. Just that. That’s one-hundred percent _it_. Slightly more than slightly a hundred percent,” Richard responds, defensively.

Jim looks around as if to check if anybody’s watching. And then he leans in, whispering conspiratorially, “bullshitting was never your forté.”

“Yeah, well…” Richard gestures vaguely to the whole of the space, to mean the people on the other side, this sordid mess of it all, with its excessive minutiae, its oppressive conventions, its heavy demands. Some general gesture of indignation toward all of it. Even them, sort of.

They both lean on the wall and stare at the crowd peeking from the other side.

“Yeah, I hate them all,” Jim muses, bitter yet somehow reverent anyway.

“I tried to fit in for so long. I say I don’t care about fitting in, but, y’know…” Richard punctuates the thought with a helpless hand wave.

“I’ve pretended to be somebody for so long I’m uncertain about, well, everything,” Jim whines. “I’m not so sure what I want is what _I_  want.”

The wall behind them is cold but it’s warm where their arms touch. Richard stares Jim tug at his own collar, gingerly, gracefully, long fingers, manicured nails, lightly grazing along the contours of crisp fabric.

He starts thinking about somebody else’s hands. Long. Graceful. Carefully tracing along his collar. The air around them suddenly feels a little too warm. A little too thin.

He catches himself pulling at his own shirt.

This is embarrassing.

“I might just take you up on that crisis… _thing_ ,” he says, going for low and confident, coming off pinched and uncomfortable.

“Adamantly _not_ your style,” Jim declares, with absolute certainty.

“How would you know?”

Jim shrugs. “So I don't. Just a guess.”

For a moment, Richard considers responding with a succinct contradiction just to prove a point. He can be impulsive. Bad decisions are definitely in his ballpark, his wheelhouse, his alley, whatever else. Practically his brand. Practically his identity.

He moves a hand up to trace along the downward taper of a charcoal lapel. Slowly. Heavily. Asymptotically.

He quickly recoils.

“Fine, you’re right!”

 Jim’s face climbs up a curve of micro-expressions going from slightly disappointed to smug, settling to something benignly pleased.

“I kind of figured this wasn’t going to go my way,” he says, inspecting his fingernails again.

Richard laughs, pointedly _at_  present company.

“God. What now?” he asks quietly.

“Now I go back to whatever it is I’m supposed to go back to. You go back to dealing with your ruse,” Jim chirps.

Richard casts his gaze far, at the archway a few paces away, imagining the world moving behind it. Laboriously then swiftly, stretching and contracting, ambivalent as a sea through the seasons. The lights move and the people blur in and out.

Jared is somewhere in there. Winnie, too. His parents are also somewhere in there. And then there’s everybody else.

God, what a mess. A massive technicolor blur.

A hand claps on his shoulder. The blur sharpens with a sharp pull along the edges of his vision. Richard blinks, regards the heavy hand on his shoulder, and looks up.

“So, I don’t mean to sound presumptuous, but I was kind of expecting some speech. Jim, you’re a piece of shit, et cetera, et cetera.”

Richard scoffs. “Come on.”

Jim’s mouth curves in a wry smile. “Really? Nothing?”

Well, there is a list. In fact, it's right there, ready to be unpacked. A thorough takedown. Every single grievance. Shaming and guilting and emotional knife-twisting and every hateful thing he’s ever wanted to declare on behalf of his younger self. Instead, he braces himself and exhales.

“We were kids,” he says simply.

Jim is silent. He bites his lip, then lets out a sigh of relief and frustration. “Is that your way of saying you’re taking the higher ground?”

Richard rolls his eyes. “I was stupid. You were stupid.”

“Of course. And look at us now,” Jim responds, wistful and bitter. “No longer stupid.”

 

* * *

 

Perspective is a funny thing, Jared thinks. He’s lived a life of looking over vistas from afar. The great looming silhouettes of every city he’s ever stayed, the glow of their windows with an air of mystery, daunting as they are enchanting. The sedately cut stretches of Palo Alto, with its supersonic hum looming larger than life, dense and magnetic. Always outside looking in, peering for a hint of something close and comprehensible.

And yet, inside it’s always a mess. Like densely knit clusters of neurons firing in the brain, messy and abuzz with internal dissonances as it bounces its triggers across a venous tangle of bodily systems. Dysfunctional households. The caustic press of collegian obligations. Conglomerations toiling inexhaustibly to take on an outwardly polished sheen.

And there he is, within and without, magnetized and repelled by the swell of it all, as if tugged by ropes from opposing ends, welcome, unwelcome, just a visitor passing by.

The light in the room glistens like starlight, bursting and shrinking. The hall alternates from bright to dim, again and again.

Couples circling the floorspace seem to float right over the  surface. The chords pulled by strings and pressed into keys seem to stretch in a single sustained sound. A room filled with hundreds of people, all somehow beautiful, all somehow faceless.

It is all so alien.

Jared stares it all and wonders what it is that makes beauty seem so grotesque, up close. He stares at the ceiling. Maybe if he searches thoroughly enough he’ll catch the light hitting all the strings propping everything perfectly—horrendously perfectly—into place.

“You know, back in Hooli I used to supervise these library scrubs. _Smoothening the landscape_. Quality control. Censorship, basically,” he says, a little shakily.

Winnie raises her shoulders and scrunches her face in distaste.

“Sounds like a utopian nightmare,” she sighs.

Jared nods. “I don’t even think I’d pass quality control here,” he says, quietly.

Then, she nudges him by the elbow. “Don’t back out now,” she warns.

Jared shudders at a belated realizing hitting him.

“I didn't think this through,” he admits. "I don't even know how to dance."

“So what?”

Jared gestures to the crowd. Winnie mimics him, expression incredulous.

“Donald, these are awful people you’re looking at. Sycophants with self-preservation on overdrive. Nodding and smiling and marching to the groupthink drum. It’s a cage. It’s a performance. All those obsessively curated social media feeds, in the flesh,” she moans.

Jared curves his mouth into a grimace, unconvinced and still worried.

“Is that why you’re such an iconoclast?” He teases.

Winnie glares at him slantwise. She turns back to the crowd, casting her gaze far.

There is almost something vertiginous about the way the light hits the fabric. Almost nauseating.

“You know what? Whatever. Despite that swipe, I remain firmly Team Jared,” she teases back, arid.

“Team what?” Someone suddenly pipes in, from behind.

They turn a little too quickly.

There’s Richard, right behind them, looking like he’s had a long day.

Jared gives her an imploring look. She scowls at him and turns to her brother.

“Well, I am gonna hit up some old pals,” Winnie says, with a marked enthusiasm that’s swung right past the fulcrum, swung past irony back to sincere yet disturbing exuberance. “And by hit up I mean heatedly engage in the age-old one-upping tradition. Ciao, my dears.”

 With a wave of a hand, she disappears into the fold.

Richard coughs. Jared smiles at him and looks away. They stare out into the hall, considering the site before them. The lights start to dim. The piano lilts out a chromatic twinkle, moving downward, strings pull, trumpets croon. Pairs glide along the polished floors, fabrics glinting as they move in and out of the low light.

A pair moves past them as they circle the space, twirling in precisely measured steps.

“There’s something weird about it, isn’t it?” Richard muses.

“It’s almost a little mechanical.”

“Creepy.”

They face each other and exchange exasperated looks.

“Would you like to dance?” Jared offers, passing it off as a joke but stretching his hand out eagerly anyway.

Richard looks away. “Uh… I don’t know how,” he responds, but their hands are already firmly clasped.

“That’s not a problem,” Jared responds, taking the lead.

“Well, yeah, it really isn’t, it’s just, we’ll probably look terrible,” Richard protests, following along.

“Well, then, just think about all the feathers we could be ruffling, just with our presence alone,” Jared chirps, eyebrows waggling.

“Just two guys dancing.”

“Inappropriately.”

“Incompetently.”

“Encroaching this hallowed hall. How dare we?”

Richard abruptly moves in closer as another pair glides past, nearly bumping into them. The two turn their pale faces to glare at them, whipping their blonde hair as they scoff.

Jared watches them whirl away. “Oh, those two tried to corner me into a discussion about: oh, I forget,” he says, the moment they’ve moved out of sight.

“What about?”

“Oh, they were waxing about… something frustrating about history? How it’s all so cyclical and rigid. It was riveting at first, and then it just sounded exhausting.”

“Hegelian dialectic?”

“Yeah, I think it was that.”

Richard makes a disgusted noise. “Moratorium on waxing. Moratorium on anything remotely highbrow,” he sighs, looking over Jared's shoulder to scope out the crowd.

“Oh, but now I don’t think I can mention the rest of my encounters.”

They laugh and find themselves abruptly displaced.

They check around for any stray pairs zooming by before moving a few paces back. After a few tries, they bump into another pair. This time, they exchange scowls before moving out of the way.

Richard groans, in gratifying exasperation. Jared cannot help but chuckle at him, mildly pitying, highly amused, utterly fond.

They try again. Another bump. Richard almost falls. Another scoffing pair floats off. Jared turns to Richard and almost recoils at their proximity. Richard looks up at him through a fan of lashes, and his mind ventures back to those city skylines with their glowing windows. And there he is, close enough to peer through.

He clears his throat self-consciously, but neither of them move.

“So, this really sucks,” Richard says, a little too loudly.

Someone glares askance at the both of them before moving away.

For a moment, Jared thinks he feels someone’s heartbeat quicken under layers and layers of fabric. Perspective is a funny thing.

“I concur,” He replies, pulling Richard up.

They slip out quietly, venturing into the darkened, heavily decorated halls encircling the estate.

 

* * *

 

 “You are really off brand,” Winnie utters lowly at her drink. She flicks at the lime wedge teetering by the rim and inspects the liquid through the carved crystal with a light shake.

“It’s a caipirinha,” Martin says cooly, muddling some mint in a wide glass. He dives down the counter as he continues, “I mean, I had to substitute the aguardiente with some white rum but hey, same shite, m’dear.”

By the time he comes back up with a shaker, Winnie’s already chewing on the ice.

“So you guys couldn’t, like, hire an actual bartender? What happened to Remy?”

“Remy’s on break because I needed an excuse not to,” Martin responds, circling a hand as if to conjure out the rest of the through-line. “Meet social obligations, as it were.”

“Love the tat, by the way,” Winnie says, head tilted as she squints, straining for a glimpse of ink peeking under rolled-up sleeves. “I mean, I can’t read it but I can tell it’s Greek and that alone makes it corny, but I love and accept it the way _dear father_ probably never would.”

“Oh but darling,” Martin says. With a deft flick of the wrist, he twirls the shaker and pours the contents into a glass. “ _Dear father_  already knows about it. And it’s eudaimonia. The pursuit of happiness is unequivocally  _uncorny_.”

Winnie sticks her tongue at him. He frowns at her, then promptly turns to scope the crowd.

“By the way, what’s up with your parents? Are they going through some sort of trouble?” He says lowly, leaning in.

“Oh dear,” Winnie sighs, immediately exasperated. “It can’t be that obvious.”

“Oh dear,” Martin breathes, a little too delighted. “But it is.”

She is under absolutely no obligation to offer any information. And besides, it is none of their business. She rocks her glass back and forth, crunching on the last bit of ice as some act of defiance. An amateur mixer with a mostly lame, slightly respectable tattoo raises a brow at her expectantly. She responds with a slow, exaggerated eye roll.

“Oh come on,” Martin groans. “Is it the reason why Richard's back?”

Winnie mimes a gag. In response she gets a look dubious squint thrown her way. A shrug is all it gets, in return.

“Aha!” Martin points.

“Oh please,” she grumbles.

“Do tell.” 

“Mom, as you know, is exceptionally _emo_. Hardcore. Richard being away has caused quite the strain, but y’know. If you, mister barkeep, would like to know where the real scoop is, Richard is far more dramatic than my parents ever were.” She blusters through a veritable rant, words slouching with the weight of gin on whisky on rum on gin. “See here, he thought bringing a boyfriend home would piss dear old mom and dad off, so…”

She gestures with a circular motion, willing her hand to carry the rest of the thought on.

“Eh?” Martin responds, eloquently.

“Long story short, Richie brought home a fake boyfriend,” Winnie sighs.

“You Hendrickses were always so steeped in such drama.”

“Truly. It’s not unlike, say, Pretty Woman.”

“Oh, wow, that’s just…” Martin strains in response, sounding suddenly uncomfortable.

“Sad! I know.” Winnie interrupts. “I mean, it's upsetting but also highly entertaining for a spectator such as myself.”

“Err, sure,” Martin replies, voice still oddly pinched. He starts busying himself with leftover mint and the muddler. He dives back under the counter and continues, “also your mother is right behind you.”

Winnie torques her head too quickly that her vision spins a little.

“Richard really didn’t have to go through all that trouble,” her mother says, dryly.

 

* * *

 

Right in the middle of the long hall sits a towering, dusty old portrait; a thick oil likeness of the estate patriarch. His punitive gaze with its daunting virescence, absolutely torpefying, cast over the whole of the hall like an all-seeing deity. Richard walks right past it, only noticing a few paces later that Jared is still there, squinting thoughtfully at it. He walks right back to his side and looks up at the image, a little baffled. He glances at the other portraits and back at this. They’re all the same to him.

Jared tilts his head to the side. “He looks like Steve Jobs, doesn’t he?” He quips. “Steve Jobs as an equestrian.”

Now Richard is squinting at it. He blinks.

There’s the hand poised on the chin, placed pensively so, the thinning hair, the beak-like nose, the thin glasses perched on the crook of it.

It's deeply embarrassing that he’s never noticed it before.

“Jesus, you’re right.”

They walk on, keeping up a through-line of awe teetering from sardonic to earnest. Hunting tapestries, delicately painted porcelain and lacquered armoires, glistening silverware and brass, a crown of horns mounted on polished red oak, et cetera, et cetera.

Jared will point at something and ask what it is. Richard will humor him with a made-up history, some indecorous appraisal, or a straightforward diss, zero frills.

“What about this?” Jared inquires, pointing at a blown-glass saint, hands folded in prayer, mouth half-open, expression regretful.

“I think they’re going for a theme,” Richard responds.

He looks up and gestures at the stretch of ornamentation strewn about the hall. The row of portraits along the papered walls, gilded frames fencing in pinched, stern faces. They look down at the figure, then up again at the somber whole.

It’s all ridiculous, and yet they’re here, compelled anyway.

There is something compelling about the way Jared regards much of the items, Richard finds. A deep intrigue, somehow invariable as they progress. Richard finds himself staring again and again, helplessly transfixed. As they speak, he concentrates on pale hand tracing at the polished curves of a brass gazelle soldered in mid-gallop. A slow drag along the carved frames of an old wooden hutch. Fingertips delicately grazing at a marble bust with profound fascination, almost reverent.

Richard finds himself scratching at the skin under his collar. The air in the room might be thinning out. His jacket feels heavier. His tie feels like it’s on too tight.

When he looks up again, there’s another gaze directed right at him, unyielding and intent. A haunting, distant glow. It lasts for a few seconds, then it’s gone.

Richard drops his hand from his neck. He looks away, deeply embarrassed.

They’re near the end of the hall. A soft yellow glow fuzzes from the archway at the tail of it, the rise and fall of strings wafting in, faint yet full.

When Richard reaches the pillars, he turns to find Jared still distracted, poking at a fan of dried foliage and peacock feathers peeking from a painted vase.

This kind of reminds me of one of my foster mothers,” he shares. “Whenever she would entertain guests, would steal the neighbors decaying roses and shove them in empty liquor bottles. She'd pick weeds from the yard and put them salad like they were edible flowers. I think to her mind, she was the next Barefoot Contessa, but I don’t think her friends were very amused.”

Richard gives Jared a look that’s equal parts horrified and amused. “I can’t decide if I’m supposed to feel sad for your foster mom or her friends,” he says.

Jared only shrugs, ostensibly nonchalant, partially still fixated on the vase and its contents. “Well, she did have a lot of fun.” Then, he turns to Richard. “Hmm, I think in some ways I think I might have picked up that habit.” He gestures vaguely to himself, as if to make a point.

Richard is absolutely ill-equipped to overturn any self-deprecating commentary—staunchly, invariably, disastrously ill-equipped. Whether it’s to comfort or to console or argue. He’s not unsympathetic. Just awkward.

Yet somehow, something in him just stutters out, “well, just so you know, if you mean to impress people, well. I’m impressed. Really. Impressed, I mean.” The rest of it regresses in flustered tangle of structural failure. “Just, to say, y’know, it’s not unappreciated. And I mean, it’s not, like, excessive. At least as far as I can tell, it isn’t. It’s just. I mean. It’s. You always look good. Neat. Sharp. Good.”

Jared starts laughing again and Richard can’t decide if he’s laughing at the word salad or the utter catastrophe of what was supposed to be a well-meaning compliment, nothing more, except that it slightly, slightly is just a degree away from well-meaning.

“Oh. Uh, thank you,” Jared responds, tilting into a question at the tail. “That’s really… it means a lot.”

The unambiguously, overwhelmingly, utterly fond look directed at him makes Richard drop his gaze to the floor. determined to navigate his way out of this topic with his line of sight anywhere but forward.

“Uh-huh,” he responds, or at least makes some attempt to. His mouth tries to form the words but the sound comes out jumbled.

Now he’s staring at two pairs of shoes, one significantly larger than the other. He looks up and finds himself abruptly staring directly into a patch of blue. There’s something strange the kind of gaze directed at him, slightly amiss in a fine-gash-on-glass, pulled-thread-on-sheet, slightly-askew-stack kind of way. The hall is too dim and he’s downed to many drinks to make any sensible conclusion, but there is something slightly, ever so slightly anxious about the way he is being regarded. A quiet dread that’s faint but unmistakeable.

Richard tries to take stock of the facts at hand. The general amenableness that has never been completely exclusive to him, but somehow keeps extending beyond the acceptable level of amenable, lurching straight into over-the-top deference that he feels slightly awful about, but also feels somehow painfully familiar. Beyond that there is absolutely nothing to suggest that he is not, in fact, being hasty and injudicious—as per usual—in concluding some things about where they currently are, in the interpersonal interrelation sense.

If they are both just dancing around the point and taking detours and stretching this entire thing out into a long drag of a pointless conversation then Richard is determined to pivot it somewhere final, or at least somewhere with a definite target.

His brain does a split-second check for all the signs that point to all of this being reasonable and not, in fact, stupid. Impulsively so. Like every other decision he’s ever committed to. Like that one time, more than a decade ago. 

The space is dark. The air is cool. His hands are heavy. This won’t be the dumbest thing he’s ever done, but it’ll definitely be notable. Top ten? Top five? Not the worst, but thoroughly dumb enough to warrant some spot in the rotation of abrupt mental tangents constantly derailing him at the most inconvenient of times.

For example, now.

“Richard, are you all right?” Jared inquires.

“Uh, yeah.”

“It’s just that you’ve gone quiet. And I think your hands are twitching.”

“I’m fine.” _To an extent._

His hands are practically leaden, now. This is the worst time to freeze up.

As if time and space willed three seconds to stretch and stretch into something infinitely long and oppressively vertiginous. If it isn’t the ground that’s churning and the oxygen practically thinning out, there’s definitely something hammering down on the air. Louder, faster, beating down again and again and again and…

Are those footsteps?

Those are definitely footsteps.

Sharp stiletto heels clacking on the marble floors.

“Ah, Richard,” calls a voice.

It’s his mother. He instinctively recoils.

“I thought I saw you there,” she says.

_Jesus._

Richard turns and sees his mother there under the archway, crystal coupe in one hand, the other poised on her hip, mouth quirked upward in what—if Richard didn’t know any better—looked suspiciously like she was up to something.

“I'd like you to meet some people who have been dying to see you again,” she continues.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I guess at this point, the parallels are a little too obvious that pointing them out here would be a little insulting. And yet I do feel the need to kind of point out the push and pull of opposing forces, here. The old and the young. Insiders and outsiders. Corporations and startups. What is drama without conflict, after all? Probably not drama. Probably a mood piece.


	6. Act Three

An ivory Mercedes circles down a darkened path. A thick frost on the window fuzzes out the view on the other side, fusing the tree line, streetlights, snowfall, and sundry into a haze. Winnie slouches in the bucket seat, ignoring everything within proximity, willing her mind to wallow back into the safe oblivion of white rum inebriation. From behind she can hear the muffled sound of fingers tapping at the glass in a steady, nervous rhythm. She keeps her gaze to the view outside, searching for nothing in particular. Maybe a distraction to direct her attention away from the conversation happening behind.

“So. Guess your mother knows,” Jared says.

“You think?” Richard snaps, shrill.

Winnie squirms and stretches her legs until her bare feet press at the chassis.

As the car curves, John tilts his head once, a stern jolt that gets Winnie’s attention. She snaps up, back straight, mind hovering in the shaky haze of a nervous half-crapulous, half-awake state.

“So, weird time? What’s the story there?” He asks on the sly.

“Ah, y’know,” Winnie says, with a wave as casual as she can manage.

_Mother found out that Richard went through all this trouble to piss her and dad off so she went through the trouble of making up weird anecdotes about him and his Boy Friday to some notable folks. Y’know, just a bunch of society bigwigs. Who cares?_

“Nothing unusual, I guess,” she mutters.

“Ah.” John makes another turn. “Strange, things seem tense back there. You sure it’s nothing?” He inquires, keeping his voice low.

_Well there is the part where Richard is terrible under pressure! And I mean, excessively dumb. An incident in a public restroom resulting into a pants trade-off dumb. Do not ask, I only found out about it earlier and even I do not fully comprehend what I’d heard._

“Richard…” Jared calls, a little sheepishly, even for him.

“It’s fine,” Richard hisses. “I’m fine. Can we just give it a rest?”

John chuckles as Winnie makes a dedicated effort to sink lower into her seat.

“Ya sure?” He whispers.

Winnie sighs. She looks out and starts tapping at the glass in measured beats to match the tapping coming from behind. The drive takes a little longer through the thick seasonal fog and there nerves rattling her head stretching everything into an excruciating near-eternity. By the time the car stops in their driveway, she very nearly has the mind to kick the door in an aggressive fashion. But, expectations do rarely match reality. In this particular reality, violent door-kicking has been precluded by the very weight of alcohol and guilt induced fatigue.

Her chauffeur opens the door for her instead. She looks around and realizes the car is empty, save for her very slovenly self.

“Are they already inside?” She rasps.

“Win, you were out cold. They’ve been inside for a while now.”

“What’s a while?”

“Ten minutes.”

“And what were you doing?”

John chuckles. Winnie gives him a pat on the shoulder as she stumbles past, bare feet tiptoeing on the freezing stone, quietly stumbling all the way to the kitchen for a gulp of water.

She snaps up at the sight of something tall, slight, and bluish.

“Damn it, Donald, you’re pretty frightening just standing there like that,” she gasps.

“Oh, sorry about that,” Jared answers, apologetic. “I do have somewhat ghostlike features.”

Winnie purses her lips tightly, trying not to cringe in agreement.

She crosses the kitchen, walks over to the sink, flips the faucet and realizes belatedly that the water’s pouring, but nothing’s catching it.

A stream hisses into the metal, down the drain, for a few uncomfortable seconds. Winnie groans. A pale, slightly blue-tinted hand holds a glass under the stream. The faucet is flipped shut. She takes the full glass of water handed to her and downs it in one go.

“Thanks,” she rasps.

Jared gestures for the glass. She passes to him. He fills it again and hands it back to her.

“Have another. Hangovers aren’t especially unpleasant when people are yelling. Or so I’ve been told,” he says.

Winnie leans back at the tiles as she knocks back the water. “Please. Who’s gonna yell?”

 

* * *

 

It’s Christmas day.

There are five seats set at the table, a spread in the middle, the same as every holiday Richard remembers having spent at home. The same fanned out decks of carved cheese and meat on the same wooden boards, the same ceramic bowl with the same fruit spilling out, the same carved crystal flutes and the same rosé, as if it’s all just the same, there’s just an extra seat at the table now. There are people talking, but he can’t make sense of what about.

He picks at his salad and the eerie timbre of steel scraping through porcelain cuts through the chatter. There’s a pale hand over his wrist, calm and steady until he stops the scraping, and he doesn’t know what to make of that. The chatter continues all the way to the common room, with the fire flaring at the corner. He looks at his wrist and the hand is still there. Something about it should be infuriating. He’s fine. He’s okay. He doesn’t need any keeping. 

When Richard strains to follow the conversation, he realizes there are only ever really three voices speaking. He looks up and realizes something odd. The pinched expression on his mother’s face is new to him. The aim of this ruse was always to get to this point: the part where his parents become visibly ill at ease until some admission of guilt is provoked out of them. And yet, the ruse is up. Nobody’s pointed it out, but they all know it’s up.

The chatter continues.

“No, dad, I don’t think human ears are conditioned to look for a wintery leitmotif, that’s absurd.”

“But you have to admit m’dear, holiday staples are usually bluesy. Maybe not the same melody but certainly the keys and the chords tend to stay within a range.”

“Perhaps, but there’s also the matter of record distribution. If holiday jazz records historically chart and sell well, distributors tend to fund more of those. But I don’t mean to reduce music to business.”

“Nah Jared, that’s absolutely correct.”

“Winifred, you’re just saying that because it’s a case for your argument.”

“Father, please! I am always right.”

Richard looks down at his steadied wrist and realizes he’s slightly, slightly trembling. He’s fine. He’s okay. This is ridiculous. He’s at home, he shouldn’t be uncomfortable here. Jared’s hand moves to the back of his neck and it’s new but the jolt of shock he expects doesn’t come. He looks up at stark blue eyes and expects him shoulders to tense up with nerves on overdrive, and yet his posture only slackens. In front of him, a pale face smiles, and he smiles back, if a little weakly. He doesn’t know what to make of that.

“So, I think it’s time for presents,” his mother finally says.

Chet Baker records from their parents to Winnie. A hardbound collection of Euripides from Winnie to their parents. An antique spyglass from Jared to Richard’s parents. (He says it’s from both of them; it only is if the money counts. He’s never been one for sentimental objects, as the other Hendrickses keenly know.) When Harold and Caroline ask about it, he recalls a story from both his and Richard’s early years. One about looking up at the stars and a fervent yearning to reach over to some distant place full of promise, one about looking closer and seeing the moon clearly for the first time, its full smoothness transforming into something rough and wrinkled. A pleasant way to pass the time and something to remember their son by whenever the sting of a great distance makes itself known.

“I wasn’t actually sure if an overly cheesy gesture would be the best foot forward, but I thought you would appreciate the sentiment,” Jared says, a little sheepishly.

“Oh, I wasn’t one for cheesy gestures either,” Caroline responds, delighted. “But I’m glad you’ve taken the lead. I would’ve felt silly with this.”

She takes out a ribboned box and lays it down carefully in front of her son. They exchange knowing, apologetic looks, and Richard pulls out the ribbon and takes out a cup with large, golden gash slicing through it. He takes it out to inspect, slightly more than slightly baffled.

“This is… literally the most eccentric thing,” he says truthfully.

“It’s _kintsugi_ , you philistine,” Winnie chides.

“It’s stunning,” Jared remarks, fully sincere.

“I made the attempt to mend the cup myself,” Caroline says, more sheepish than proud.

“If you must know, I ended up doing most of the patching up,” Harold follows. “Darling, your finesse leaves much to be desired. I thought it was ridiculous at first but the point is…” He turns to Richard. “It’s an apology. The start of one, anyway.”

A weighty grievance bubbles out of Richard in a laugh. He can’t decide if it’s his anger or discomfort taking the lead. Either way, it comes out heavily, bitterly, profusely.

“Sorry, I’m…still angry,” he admits, trying to rein in any sourness.

“We’re not trying to be disingenuous, son,” his father says, defensive and a little pinched, curbing a severity that still comes out anyway, if only mildly. “It’s just a declaration of intent.”

Richard tries not to look at Jared and his sister, but from the periphery he can see their imploring looks. He turns to his mother, considers her pursed mouth and downturned eyes, and somehow he is fifteen again, treating silence like provocation, anxious and accusatory and needlessly antagonizing whatever menace, however slight.

“Then the other day… what was that about?” He asks, irate yet measured.

“You mean the night I found out how poorly you think of us? Richard, I know we’ve earned your ire, but for heaven’s sake!” His mother shoots back, dryly.  She turns to Jared and adds, “I’m sorry my son roped you into this.”

“I’m sorry I consented,” Jared blurts apologetically.

Richard puts a hand up to interrupt. “No, no, she’s right, I did rope you into this.”

He takes a deep breath and considers the faces in the room—the shock and discomfort and anger and anxiety mixing into a blur—and realizes, with some surprise, that he feels relieved. Like a coil he’s kept compressed in him for years and years has finally sprung free. Like the weight of fear has been purged out of him, if only momentarily.

“I have been tiptoeing around you people for years,” he starts, furious, if quietly so. “I have tried. So, so hard. I’ve always done what was expected of me. No, actually, fuck that, I’ve gone beyond that. Neurotically. And you know what? Maybe this is a little too dramatic, but it really was a nightmare.” He’s aware he’s flailing his arms around rather dramatically, but it’s too late. He’s built up too much momentum to stop now. The flailing persists. “The one time I toe out of line… the one time…and I fucking knew it would happen, but it still…”

He lets out a shaky laugh and sighs. He blinks. He doesn’t look at his wristwatch but somehow, he can sense the long hand torquing, tick after heavy tick.

Then, there’s a hand on the back of his neck. The jolt of shock he expects doesn’t come. Instead, he’s calmed. And yet, somehow, he can’t seem to move.

Richard realizes belatedly that he’s been crying.

He covers his face, deeply embarrassed.

“Why only now?” He asks, and it’s muffled from the crying that he suddenly can’t help, and the hands over his face.

Somebody moves in to hug him, and he hasn’t moved his hands from his face but he can tell it’s his mother. He’s led out the common room, lightly gripped by the shoulders.

When he drops his hands from his face, he’s baffled that he makes it at all to the backyard without tripping. They settle on a bench and he focuses on the frosted vista before him, still mostly too ill at ease to even look anywhere in his mother’s direction.

“Tell me everything,” she says to him quietly. Without malice, without dread, without grief.

 

* * *

 

_I found out when I was twelve, mom. Twelve. I’m twenty-six. I’ve been tense about this for fourteen years. Fourteen. Years._

_I know, I know. I know you guys are trying. Sorry._

_Okay. It’s okay._

_Sorry._

_No, don’t lie. You didn’t know. If you knew you would have had me transfer schools. Sorry. But come on._

_I always thought Jim was going to out me. Sometimes I kind of like to blame my anxiety on him._

_Most of the time I blame it on you guys. But I know it’s mostly just me. It’s mostly just me. I’m aware. I can’t help it._

_No, I’m trying._

_Okay, so a lot of it is you. Still._

_The pants story is true, by the way._

_The German thing is true, too._

_The click farm is true, too._

_The rest of it is slightly true._

_Yeah, you’re right, it is mostly weird._

_Actually the only thing we’ve been lying about is the part where we’re involved._

_I don’t know why I… no, that’s a lie._

_Mom!_

_Please._ _I know what that sounds like._

_This is not ridiculous._

_Being cautious is in some way the opposite of ridiculous, you know._

_Yeah, I don’t know how to tell him._

_It’s just that the last time it mattered… well, it was a disaster._

_Of course this matters._ _Of course I want to know what you think, mom._

_Of course it matters._

 

* * *

 

There’s a knock on his door, light but just enough to wake him. Jared blinks and reflexively checks the time on his phone. It’s two in the morning. He looks down, slightly embarrassed to have fallen asleep without changing, slightly embarrassed he’s fallen asleep at all.

When he opens the door, Richard is there, looking slightly panicked, like he’s steeling himself for something.

“Is this a bad time?” He asks, voice trembling at the edges as it pivots to a squeak.

Jared somehow absorbs some of the panic. He must have, because he tries to say _no_ , except there’s no sound coming out of him. He shakes his head instead.

He watches Richard bite at his lower lip, nervously. He swings the door wider.

When he replays this moment later, in the back of his mind, he won’t be able to tell who pulls who into a kiss. Only that it was sudden. Only that he eagerly responds by pulling Richard into the room and kicking the door shut. Only that they kiss until they’re knocked off balance by the edge of the bed, falling on top of each other yet somehow never losing momentum. They kick off their socks. They peel off their sweaters. They strip off every layer of clothing. They do away with all the tortuous dancing around and conversational detours and every single pivot swinging them frustrating inches away from _this_ , whatever this is between them, however long it’s been there. When a hand presses over him just as a tongue slides across the back of his teeth, when he flips them over and starts pressing his lips down and hard from bony rib to bony hip, when long fingers start to tug at his hair, when a hand slides down and takes him, no words pass between them, only heavy, reverent breaths, and yet somehow he understands, every single declaration, clearer than ever.

When they’re still and tangled on top of each other, stunned silent like they’ve got the wind knocked out of them, Richard pulls him closer.

“Sorry I lied,” he whispers.

“About what?” Jared teases.

They laugh. They hold that moment. On the window, the frost clings onto glass. Jared looks on and considers the rows of windows he’s once peered at longingly, from outside. And now, here he is. Here they are.

And so it goes.

 

* * *

 

Palo Alto is unseasonably humid in the spring. From the moment Winnie lands to the present, she notices the salted breeze lifting her hair up to a frizz. Here she is in a narrow hallway, tiding up last minute trying to brush her hair neat with one hand while keeping a carton box steady from where it’s tucked under the other arm, hearing some of the chatter from the other side of a door spill outside. The box drops with a thud.

When the door swings open, it’s her father who’s there to greet her.

“My god, did I accidentally fly to Tulsa?” She gasps. “What happened to our home?”

“We’ve kind of been waiting for an excuse to visit the West Coast,” Harold says, with a helpless shoulder shrug. Then, he turns. “Winifred’s here!” He announces, a little too loudly for her liking.

When she steps in, she recognizes five faces from the Pied Piper landing page, her parents, and somebody whose face she’s scrolled past in a Recode profile. There are two elderly ladies who, somehow, seem less awkward than the cadre of geeks. Richard crosses the room to her. Introductions are made. Winnie winks at Dinesh, who only blinks and looks around as if to check if there’s someone behind him.

She shoves the carton box at Jared.

“Happy _You’ve Finally Stopped Lying to Literally Everyone in Your Life_!” She chirps.

“Winifred, this is a housewarming party,” Jared responds wryly.

“Same shit, Donnie.”

The day passes in blips and beers and long conversations. When it gets much, much later, the sun nearly about to rise, crowd gone home, Jared asleep on the sofa, Winnie sits at the edge of a bed with her brother, watching the sparse sprinkling of lights blink out the window.

“Jared told me everything, by the way,” Richard says.

“Yeah?”

“Remember that first night I was back? You guys talked by the sink. You were smoking. He told you about the foster system and…y'know.”

“Oh. That was nothing,” Winnie answers, affectedly casual that it pivots straight into mechanical.

“It’s just that you never said…” Richard says, nearly soundlessly.

“Richie, stop worrying,” she chides.

And they look out at the sky, gleaming purple as the sun makes its entrance.

No words pass between them, but they understand.


End file.
